


New Year's Resolution

by flowers_and_thorns



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Rewrite, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Idiots in Love, KageHina - Freeform, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, requited but they're idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29404794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowers_and_thorns/pseuds/flowers_and_thorns
Summary: This fic explores a funny yet bitter-sweet KageHina moment in the series: when Hinata texted Kageyama to come with him to a shrine on New Year's Day, Kageyama replied no, and Hinata threw his phone in a fit of rage. What happened behind the scenes that fateful day and why can't these two dumb asses just figure out how to tell each other how they feel?
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	New Year's Resolution

**Author's Note:**

> The events in this fic occurred on New Year's Day in the episode "Everyone's Night" (Season 4, Episode 9). The events are all canon compliant, with some embellishments on what might have happened off-camera and what Kageyama and Hinata might have been thinking and feeling. Get ready for some KageHina feels!

Finally—New Year’s Day, almost time for the Spring InterHigh tournament, but only one thing was on Hinata Shouyou’s mind:

Asking out his crush on a date.

Hunched over his phone, Hinata sat frozen and tense on his bed, his thumb hovering over the send button. Asking Kageyama to the shrine to make a wish would be like a date, right? Wouldn’t that count as him finally building up the courage to act on his feelings? So Natsu, the only one he vented to about his crush, would stop calling him a coward?

Hinata flashed back to the moment he first saw Kageyama Tobio in middle school, at the first volleyball match he had ever played. When the King of the Court had whipped past him, all regal and intimidating, as if he wore a cape and crown, Hinata had been stunned for a moment, and forgotten why he was even there. But then… then that impressive, regal player turned out to be a total jerk!

“What have you been doing for the past three years?”

Those words had echoed in Hinata’s mind all through the rest of his final year of middle school to his first day at Karasuno High. They had fueled him through his practice with the girls’ volleyball team at his middle school, countless receives, reps, and practice serves, alone in the school hall, in his backyard, with the neighborhood ladies' volleyball team. The one thing that had consumed him was beating that smug asshole who had told him he wasn’t good enough to stay on the court.

But then, when he’d seen Kageyama again, there in Karasuno High’s gym, leaping into a jump serve as if about to take off in flight, Hinata was stunned again, just like he had been the first day he’d seen him—as if he’d forgotten this was supposed to be his mortal enemy. Because anytime Kageyama moved on the court, anytime he leapt into the air, anytime he struck the ball with his fingertips, it was poetry in motion, like watching a beautiful dancer—it took your breath away.  
  
Well, at least it took Hinata’s breath away.

Of course, he didn’t acknowledge it back then. Kageyama was his rival. The two fought so much at the time that no one thought they’d ever be able to work together on the same team. Who knew it would get to the point where they were finishing each other’s sentences, reading each other’s thoughts, acting as extensions of each other’s bodies on the court…

Hinata sighed and fell flat on his back on the bed, letting his phone drop to the mattress, the text still unsent. Hadn’t it been hard enough to earn Kageyama’s respect on the court? In Kageyama’s mind, hadn’t Hinata just been some shrimpy novice who’d held him back? And now, hadn’t they only gotten as close as they were because they had learned to trust one and other on the court? Wouldn’t he be risking all that just to ask the setter out on a date? Wouldn’t that ruin the precarious synchrony they had finally achieved?

Hinata’s phone buzzed. He startled. It was Yamaguchi.

“Wanna go to the shrine together to wish for victory? ^_^” read the text. This was it. This was the solution Hinata had been looking for.

*

Kageyama Tobio’s family was a bit concerned at this point. Every morning of winter break, they found their son’s bed empty by the time they woke up, the boy nowhere to be found. They knew he was already out running in the frigid snow. If the school gym was closed and there was no practice, that didn’t stop him. At first, the discipline had impressed them, but as winter break wore on, they became worried he was pushing himself too hard.

But anytime they tentatively asked Kageyama if something was wrong, during mealtimes at the kitchen table, the only time they could find him not holed up in his room or out doing some sort of training, he would only grunt and wolf down whatever food they gave him.

On New Year's Day, when they were particularly persistent during breakfast, Kageyama set his bowl down gruffly with a soft clatter. “Nationals are coming in a few days,” he said in his ordinary terse way. “I can’t lose.”

His parents relaxed a bit at the explanation of pre-tournament jitters, as the stoic teenager scooted out of his seat and made his way to the front door for yet another jog. They watched as he slid out of his slippers and shuffled on his tennis shoes.

“We’re proud of you. No matter what happens,” came his father’s voice from the table.

But their words of encouragement rarely reached him. Nothing satisfied him except results. Even since grade school, his obsession with volleyball had been all-consuming. Sometimes his parents worried about this. He’d never really had any friends. He’d never done very well at school. He didn’t seem to have any other hobbies or interests.

So they were hopeful when Kageyama had mentioned a boy from school named Hinata Shouyou—really the first and only person he had ever mentioned from school. They had, of course, prodded him with questions whenever the name came up—they’d even offered to have this Hinata over to visit.

But Kageyama hadn’t really ever responded much to these overtures. Still, anytime Kageyama did mention Hinata, they hooked eagerly onto the conversation.

“That’s Hinata Shouyou, right? The...middle blocker, right?”

His parents didn’t really know anything about volleyball. They rarely remembered the names of positions, or even basic rules in the sport. But they seemed to always remember little things about this player: his number, his position, that he was clumsy and unpolished, but had good reflexes and incredible jumping power and speed. Most of all that he never gave up. Oh, and that he seemed to make Kageyama very impatient and angry, to the point of ranting at dinner sometimes.

“Boke,” he would curse under his breath as if his parents weren’t there listening, eager at the rare glimpse of their stoic son opening up. “He never listens.”

But now, during winter break, Kageyama had rarely mentioned the boy, and seemed to shy away anytime his parents had broached the topic.

“Do you...have any plans with your teammates for New Year's?” his mother asked as Kageyama retied his shoelaces at the front door.

“No,” he said, straightening. There was a pregnant pause.

“We could go to the shrine—”

“Sorry. Busy training,” he said, cutting his father off, before taking off in a jog out the door. His parents exchanged concerned glances before sighing together in unison, resigned.

  
Out on his jog, Kageyama was pensive. He tried to bat away thoughts that intruded on his mind as someone with a dog on a leash dashed by and his own feet crunched on the snow and asphalt as he ran.

There _was_ something bothering him.

He hated that his parents seemed to sense it and were even nosier than usual. It was inconvenient.

The match against Shiratorizawa. The freakish attack Hinata had managed that one time with his left hand. The even more freakish intercept of Ushijima’s attack he'd performed that had won a point. The final, first tempo attack he did for the winning play—these were superhuman feats. There were moments like that, when that stupid kid stopped being this hyperactive dumbass and became a monster on the court.

These moments haunted Kageyama's mind like slow-motion clips on replay over winter break, with nothing, not practice, not class, not even school work, to occupy him now.

_If that monster evolves, he’ll be unstoppable._

It was the same chilling feeling that had come over him when they’d first met in middle school. That complete novice who suddenly performed a physics-defying jump and scored a point against all odds. That had infuriated Kageyama. Some random kid at a Podunk middle school with a poor excuse for a volleyball team had literally wasted a once-in-a-lifetime talent for three years! Doing nothing! It was all Kageyama talked about for a long time around his teammates, who took it as a criticism of their play and resented him all the more for it. He’d brought it up to his family too, but no one really noticed. Kageyama got hung up on the weirdest things. Everyone chalked it up to the eccentricity of a genius.

When he met the kid again at Karasuno High, that same fury that he’d finally recovered from came flooding back. His practice regimen at home had increased again. The same ranting and raving returned. He was getting obsessed all over again.

It only calmed down when Hinata became his ally rather than his rival. But every once in awhile that rage returned. All this time, he had assumed it was the dissonance between Hinata’s raw ability and his complete lack of polish that infuriated him so much. That this kid was constantly lagging behind because of lack of practice.

But then that match with Shiratorizawa kept haunting him no matter if he was jogging, doing reps, or lying in bed awake at night. Hinata was his rival. He finally admitted it to himself. Despite the fact he wanted to think of Hinata as inferior. And probably in a lot of ways he was: at least, in terms of experience and skill. But that monstrous talent—it would grow, it was being unleashed.

Now, when Kageyama got up before the sun rose to jog, when he dodged his parents’ questions, when he turned off his phone for hours at a time, he was merely afraid of anyone speaking to him and breaking his concentration. He knew he shouldn’t slip back into the mentality of defeating Hinata and risk splintering the team, but he couldn’t help it.

He didn’t think of Hinata as an enemy, exactly _._ In fact, his parents asking about Hinata coming over was a sore spot. As if anyone would want to come over—his teammates only tolerated him, Kageyama was sure, since he was clumsy with his words, awkward, and gruff. Hinata was friendly, of course, but he was like that with everyone. His parents thought Hinata was some sort of friend of his, and Kageyama didn’t have the heart to correct them. Friendship wasn’t even the right word, anyway. Kageyama even hesitated to use a word like “teammate,” and even “rival” fell short. Hinata was, in a word, his motivation.

His phone buzzed. Kageyama stopped running, coming to a stop on the street and slipped his phone from his pocket. It was a text from Hinata. His stomach lurched. Why? Why did his stomach _lurch_? Was it just because he was consumed, wracked with this obsession of overcoming Hinata instead of focusing on how they could win, together? It was New Year's. Hinata was asking him to go to a shrine together. He hadn’t clicked on the text, but the preview seemed to indicate that’s what it was.

Could he face Hinata? _Face Hinata?_ What did that mean? Maybe if Hinata was asking him to do something for New Year's, that meant that he wasn’t just being nice. And it meant that Kageyama could talk things through. It wasn’t typical for Kageyama to talk about his feelings, but maybe Hinata felt the same way he did. _Same way?_ Kageyama didn’t even really understand himself at this point, only that his heart was pounding at the chance of being alone with Hinata, able to talk plainly for the first time... He clicked on the text.

"I’m going on a New Year's shrine visit with Yamaguchi so we can wish for certain victory. Wanna come??"

The familiar rush of fury returned. Yamaguchi? Why with Yamaguchi? He typed his reply without hesitation, and clicked send, pocketing his phone before continuing his run. He didn’t even think about why his chest stung with disappointment. “Boke,” he muttered under his breath. “Boke, boke...”  
  
*

“No,” Kageyama’s text read. No explanation or excuse. Just “No.”

Hinata stopped pacing his room as his heart sank. Filled with anger, he threw his phone on his bed. What a jerk! He could have at least been nicer about it!

But what had he expected? Kageyama was so anti-social. He didn’t really seem interested in being actual friends with anyone on the team outside of school. He probably thought hanging out for no reason was a waste of time… Hinata fell back onto his bed and hugged his pillow, squeezing his eyes tight, willing himself not to cry. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t asked Kageyama out on a date. It was just an outing with him and Yamaguchi. He hadn’t shown his heart, he hadn’t ruined their relationship as teammates. At least things wouldn’t be weird. At least Hinata could still keep his secret…  
  


Right when Hinata had met Yamaguchi outside the shrine it was obvious his friend could tell how down he was feeling, even without saying it. Hinata appreciated how Yamaguchi did all he could to cheer him up, telling him funny stories about the other team members as they walked up the steps to the shine, and even going so far as to buy him a charm after they made their wishes. But the trip seemed over in a flash, and when Yamaguchi was waving goodbye from a distance and walking away, the same melancholy flooded back in. How could Hinata get closer to Kageyama if he wouldn’t even agree to see him outside of practice?

Dragging his feet, Hinata walked with his bike aimlessly for awhile, and found himself heading toward the school. He got back on the bike and began cruising down the hill. Why not? He would just look around, maybe climb up on the ledge on the side of the gym to peer in the window, get as close as he could to that slick gleaming floor, the smell of fresh volleyballs, the swaying net, all that potential energy at a stand-still inside…

Weird, probably. But it was something. And he was too sad to just go home now.

After pedaling over hills and frost, he finally came up to the school. The campus was entirely deserted and lined with snow as he parked his bike in its usual spot. Out of the stillness, there was a sudden movement in the far distance. It was Kageyama, jogging toward the gym. Hinata hid behind a school building as the tiny speck of his teammate’s body became more distinguishable. Peeking around the wall, Hinata spied Kageyama, who did not appear to have noticed him. The setter approached the gym wall and peered in the gym window.

 _What a loser,_ Hinata thought. But then, he remembered he was going to do the same thing. Then he frowned. That asshole wasn’t too busy to go with him to the shrine!

He gulped and balled his hands into fists. He was going to demand an explanation. Why hadn’t Kageyama said yes? He had nothing better to do. Just as he resolved to confront Kageyama, a familiar voice called out to him. Hinata spun around. Something small struck him square between the eyes.  
  
“OY!” he cried, his forehead smarting. It was Nishinoya, wielding a wooden paddle and a huge grin on his face.

“I challenge you!” Nishinoya cried, jabbing the paddle in his direction like a sword.

Grumbling, Hinata stooped and picked up the shuttlecock that had struck him in the face. “You’re on!”

Nishinoya tossed Hinata a wooden paddle and soon enough the two were at a fierce game of hanetsuki, a game that involves keeping a shuttlecock airborne with wooden paddles. It wasn’t long before Kageyama, having heard the commotion, approached and wanted in on the fray.

“One-on-two isn’t a fair match,” Nishinoya said, shaking his head.

“TAKE ME ON, BOTH OF YOU!” Hinata cried, his face red with seething fury.

Nishinoya and Kageyama stared at him nonplussed for a moment, before breaking into peels of laughter.

Before long, after Kageyama and Nishinoya had whipped Hinata multiple times, Tanaka suddenly made an appearance. “Yo! You’re all here?” He wanted in on the game immediately, and Nishinoya had another paddle to share.

The four played, Hinata and Tanaka against Kageyama and Nishinoya, for hours on end, continuing even after Daichi randomly showed up and tried to convince them to rest for the holiday. Hinata and Kageyama had forgotten everything that had worried them all winter break. For now was only the joy of keeping a ball airborne, together, in the crisp winter air of a new year.  
  
*

Finally, the sun was sinking low in the sky, and Nishinoya remarked that his parents would be expecting him home soon. After that, the game disintegrated as the other boys returned Nishinoya’s paddles and scattered to return home.

But Kageyama and Hinata’s path started off in the same direction, so the two found themselves walking together away from the school. Hinata walked with his bike and was whistling, and Kageyama had his hands in his pockets.

“Oy, I’m surprised you’d waste a whole training day on a game like that,” Hinata said, as casually as possible.

Kageyama shrugged and didn’t look in his direction as he checked his phone and pocketed it.

“Did you miss everyone?” Hinata said in a taunting voice.

“As if,” Kageyama hissed eyes narrowing. “Boke.”

“Do you have a problem with Yamaguchi?” Hinata suddenly asked.  
  
“What? No.” There was a pause. “Are you mad at me or something?”

“Well, you obviously had nothing better to do. So I wondered why—”

“It’s none of your business.” Kageyama’s heart was beating fast despite himself. He was finally alone with Hinata, wasn’t that what he wanted? And yet he never could say anything he actually meant.

“It’s a little rude to say no without an explanation,” Hinata said.

“It’s also rude to invite another person as an afterthought last minute!”

“Oh.” Hinata stopped in his tracks as if thinking. Then he hit the palm of his hand with his other fist in an “aha” gesture. “I see!” He laughed and resumed walking. “You’re weird, you know.”

“You don’t have to feel obligated to invite me to things,” Kageyama said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Just because we’re teammates.”

“ _Ehhh_ _?”_ Hinata looked taken aback. “I invited you because I wanted you to come!” He laughed. “Boke.”

Kageyama said nothing to this—his thoughts were racing at this new information. Hinata _wanted_ him to come? He felt Hinata’s eyes on him, an expression of curiosity on his face.

They walked in silence until they reached the point where they would part ways on the walk home.

“I’m glad you came by the school, though.” Hinata shot him a brilliant smile. “Happy New Year, Kageyama!” But before Kageyama could say anything, Hinata climbed on his bike and began pedaling off with unstoppable zeal. He churned his way up the hill and became smaller and smaller in the distance as Kageyama stood and watched him.

 _He **is** my teammate, _Kageyama reminded himself. _Not just my rival. Maybe we are also friends, too. Or...something else._

It was fine. It was totally okay to, for now, not really think about what “something else” could be. Kageyama was mentally filing it away for another time as he turned in the other direction and began the long jog home.

**Author's Note:**

> Posted just in time for Chinese New Year! I'm really proud of how this one turned out! I'm considering making more canon rewrites like this that retell canon events but with all the gay feels we KNOW happened behind the scenes, so please let me know if y'all would be interested in that! Or even just what you thought of this one! <3


End file.
